Saturday, May 10, 2014

Lupin hummus

I have found that sweet lupin makes a fine substrate for hummus. The point of this post isn't to present an optimal hummus recipe, but merely to show that lupin can be used instead of chick pea, and the hummus will still be pretty good.

I made one batch of raw sprouted hummus, and one batch of cooked hummus.

Raw sprouted lupin hummus:
Soak seeds over night.
Remove unswelled seeds (I'll post later on how to deal with these)
Sprout the swelled seeds for 36 hours (put them in a bowl with a lid set lightly on top, rinse and drain every 12 hours).

You'll notice that I put lemon juice in the raw hummus, and additional salt in the cooked hummus, but there's no reason you couldn't make a saltier raw hummus or a lemony cooked hummus. I was just experimenting (and you should too!). Both recipes worked. The cooked hummus is a bit richer, and the raw hummus is a bit fresher, which are the effects I was going for.

My hummus ended up being pretty coarse, and a little chewy. I think this could be solved by more thorough blending, possibly in the presence of additional oil. I was using a fairly inexpensive blender, and not filling the chamber all the way, so it didn't blend very well.

An issue with lupins is that they have a tougher hull than most other edible beans, and there isn't an easy way to remove the hull, so if you don't thoroughly cream the hummus, the hull fragments will contribute to a texture that is a bit unusual for hummus (although I personally don't find it unpleasant).

Sprouted lupins, ready to blend

Raw on the left, cooked on the right. The raw is a bit lighter color, but other than that, they looked the same to me.